DT with guitar pedals

[Abbe]

Thank you so much for all answers!

I think I’ve been able to solve the problem. I opened up the MIDI box to see if the internal switches were set to Chase Bliss (TRS) or Empress pedals (TR). The manual say that the “box comes set from the factory to control Chase Bliss devices”, so I’ve never cared to look, but if for some reason, they weren’t, that would explain a lot.

Now, the switch is something called a “jumper” that coveres two pins. But I don’t understand, should the jumpers be connected to the two pins closest to CBA or is it the naked pin that shouyld be close to CBA?. The manual doesn’t tell.

Just to try, I did swich one of them (from they way they are shown in the image to the other way, so that the jumper instead covers the two pins closest to “CBA”), and connected that port to my pedal, and voila, now clock works as it should!.

So, I assume the jumpers really are suppose to cover the pins close to (in my case) CBA, and that they were set on Empress by mistake (I bought the box new, and have never opened it before). If you know that this indeed is so, please let me know!

And now I am also able to control the pedals via the DT encoders! It worked!!! A new world of possiblities!

There is still a weird thing that happens though, when I plug or unplug too slowly, that one of the stomp switches functionalities “turns on”. It’s no biggie though, it’s just to turn it off again. And I also can’t seem to make the DT encoder control the Thermae yet (even though I’ve restarted it in MIDI-listening mode many times), but i’ll probably work it out eventually.

So anyway, a HUGE thank you to everyone who came with suggestions! That list of MIDI settings from @Tchu is especially helpful!

[futureaztec]

Hi I am going in circles. I am surprised that I can see anything with regard to connecting the Digitakt to Chase Bliss Blooper directly. Sure, I could use a MIDI Box. But I don’t want another damn box, with more cables and another ac adaptor. It would be nice to connect the Digitakt to the Blooper with a MIDI to TRS cable only. Can this be done?

I was looking at this: https://youtu.be/EduGv7TYMJ0?t=477

and this: https://www.disasterareaamps.com/shop/5p-cba-cable

Is the MIDI Box absolutely necessary?

[Not_DIV1N]

Best thing to ever happen to my workflow was Overbridge and processing tracks individually. As someone that started on guitar, I simply view plug-in effects as pedals, especially since the only effects maker I use has a “rack” to handle them all, Soundtoys.

But I do miss the knobs as is tradition.

[futureaztec]

I went with this…

Step Audio 1.5 foot 5-pin MIDI to 1/4" TRS cable | Ring Active | Chase Bliss...

[futureaztec]

Okay. As I was waiting for the Step Audio cable above, I tried to do some workarounds by sending cv and gate from a modular. I thought I had it but was having sync issues.

Well it’s Christmas Eve and the MIDI to TRS cable arrives…

I found this video helpful, as well as the settings on the forum here. Because I am using the Digitakt to provide REC/PLAY to the Blooper pedal (instead of a simple gate), I need to think of how to come up with a good workflow. So everything works, but when I was sending only gates, I would set up a trig on the first step of a 64 step sequence. This would mean I could get the pedal to REC as soon as I hit play on the DT, then it would flip to PLAY on the start of the second pass. Then I would reach over to the DT and mute that channel so it wouldn’t start DUBing. This was all done by converting the MIDI trigs to CV gates.

Now that have the proper cabling, I am sending MIDI directing into the CB Blooper. The good news is I no long have issues and everything feels tight. However, because of the way that the CC’s and Values are arranged in the CB Blooper MIDI implementation, I am not sure how to set the DT up for optimal looping control.

Any suggestions? Do you see my problem? REC is now a dedicated command (which is probably better).

[AldoVino]

Hey, I don’t have the Blooper but I used to have a very similar workflow with the Ditto X4. One thing that took me quite some time to figure out is that the Digitakt won’t send the same CC value twice. If you have a trig with the value 10 sent on the CC#1 (to trigger the recording), it will send a CC message the first time but not during the subsequent cycles. It will only send CC#1 data once its value changes again.

Knowing that, I would try the “Multi-control” command (the CC#11) because the value would always alternate between 1 and 2 when starting and stopping the recording. Once that’s done, you can just overdub manually with the pedal switch, because the length of the loop is fixed and synced to the Digitakt.

So to set this up on the Digitakt, I would use a MIDI track and change its scale so it’s slower than the rest of the sequencer (so if I remember correctly FUNC + PAGE to enter pattern length settings, then FUNC + Yes to switch to Scale Per Track, and then just set that MIDI track to something like 1/4 maybe?). Then on the first step you put a CC#11 trig with the value 1 to trigger the recording and halfway through the pattern you put another step with the value 2 which should stop the recording and start the playback of the loop.

In theory that should work but these setups can be wonky, any minor delay will cause the loop to drift after a few minutes. But that’s probably worth a try. And yo Happy Christmas everyoneeee<3

[futureaztec]

@AldoVino

One thing that took me quite some time to figure out is that the Digitakt won’t send the same CC value twice. If you have a trig with the value 10 sent on the CC#1 (to trigger the recording), it will send a CC message the first time but not during the subsequent cycles. It will only send CC#1 data once its value changes again.

Okay this makes sense. One CC value per trig?

Here’s some of what’s going on (gets complicated fast or at least it’s hard to describe).

I got really excited when I realized that I could control the MOD(A) and MOD(B) knobs on the blooper with the knobs on the Digitakt. But then I realized that if I run a longer scale, say 1/8th, I would loose the automation resolution right?

So then I thought it would be good to maybe send the REC and Play from one MIDI track and the modulation from another one. This would, presumably, allow for a long REC/PLAY track but retain a higher resolution parameter recording.

I hit a block right away though. I thought I could simply assign two MIDI tracks to send to the same MIDI channel (maybe I can, not sure). However, I don’t seem to be able to get the parameter encoders to control the blooper knobs on that additional track.

Keeping the two (REC/PLAY vs. MOD control) separate is important for another reason, I would think: I can’t seem to find a way to do a ‘one shot trig’. So a workaround was to set the condition high (1:8), then when my hands get free simply mute that channel, so that it doesn’t fire REC again and erase it. (Maybe I can resolve this with ‘multi-control’ as you suggested). But if I am controlling modulation on that channel as well I imagine it will mute the modulation.

• update: I have been hammering away a the drift issue all day. I set the MIDI note divisions to half note. There is definitely a conflict when you try to send blooper a REC pulse and have the MIDI clock turned on (CC#51 Val=1).

So, in the spirit of getting on with it I finally just gave it a shot in the old style where the pedal is MIDI clocked waiting for an ‘arm’ command (just directly using the footswitch on the pedal), then it fires properly on the first down beat. Any other way I tried I was getting drift, or the pedal would start late.

At least right now I finally hit that immediacy when the gear all starts working again and you can focus on production.

Since the sequencer doesn’t need to be switched to 1/8 notes, I can get better resolution on the blooper modulation knobs when recording automation (p-locks).

[AldoVino]

Okay glad you got something going even though that was not the expected workflow! For the record, it should be possible to control multiple parameters from multiple MIDI tracks (with different length/resolution), I do it quite often when controlling external synth. And yeah no one-shot trig on the DT indeed, that was annoying too. I never tried it but I think the closest feature would be the FILL trig condition. You can lock the FILL mode by pressing Page + Yes (it’s slightly tricky as you have to release Page before Yes). It locks the FILL mode for 1 cycle and resets at the beginning of the next cycle I believe. So yeah unusable if your “record trig” is on the first step… Anywayyyy, have fun.